In this RP, Courtnie's characters finally broke Ryoka out for real. Since I can't see him staying with them, let's just assume he's thanked them properly though grudgingly and taken leave of them. He'd've told them that he'd go home. He is good at lying.
PG-13, m/m, masochistic tendencies, about 2 250 words.For I have made her prison be her every step away from me
And this child I would destroy if you should try to set her free.~Vienna Teng
Ryoka is free.
He’s in a slightly different forested area, pines instead of deciduous, and he’s up a tree again, waiting for the rain to stop so he can keep tracking his countrymen.
He’s free.
He keeps thinking that, over and over again, and rubbing the weirdly empty space on his right wrist where the locator bracelet used to be. He’s free. Xeng Kho cannot find him; he’s on his own territory now.
There’s rain dripping down the back of his neck and soaking the hems of his silk pants. He still
looks like a harem boy, even if he isn’t actually one. Anymore. No, Xeng Kho never really had a harem. Just Ryoka.
He’s free.
Now what the hell is he supposed to do?
He’s legally dead; his men reported that, on his orders, after the first miserably failed escape attempt. He hadn’t wanted anyone to know. Now he’s regretting that. It’s not as if they won’t know anyway. He still trusts his soldiers with his life, but word gets around.
Especially when –
A well-lit room, mirrored and gilded, three toms seated on silk cushions. A leash around his neck and cuffs on his hands, hiding the bracelet and his wrist marks. Xeng Kho’s tail twitching in front of him, white hair obscuring his view of the other two’s faces –A certain fluffy bastard puts you on a leash and makes you sit behind him while he’s conducting negotiations with your former commanding officers. Ryoka doesn’t remember ever being acknowledged, but he’s the only tabby he knows with his exact markings and, well, word gets around.
He rubs at his wrist again, trying to erase the ghost feeling of the bracelet. That just makes him remember other things, and his hand goes up to the scar across the stripes on his right cheek –
A pale hand moving like lightning, claws extended, knocking him backwards with the force of the blow. Gentle hands and gentle words and a rough tongue licking the blood off his face –Ryoka shudders and pulls his silks tighter around him, resolutely not letting his hands move. The rain comes down like a thousand whispers through the pines, all of them talking about him.
The silk shifts without impetus from him, and he freezes in alarm –
Holding perfectly still while Xeng Kho wraps him in a new shirt, avoiding looking at the last one, the one that’s laying on the floor half-soaked in blood and things he’d rather not think about. The silk twining around him, as restrictive as a cage –But he’s free. He doesn’t have to go back to that.
He pulls his shirt off, popping two of the buttons without really noticing, and jumps down from his branch. He finds the clearest area he can and lets the rain pound him until his hair is soaked through and his tail is as narrow as a rat’s and he can’t even feel his fingers, let alone his ghosts.
He throws himself backwards and lays on the ground, ignoring the needles stabbing him in the back. The rain hits his eyes and he blinks it off, but otherwise, he doesn’t move.
He has nowhere to go.
He refuses to consider going home. They’ll say how pleased they are that he’s alive, and he’ll probably get some kind of medal for capture in the line of duty, and it’ll all be very dramatic and joyous, and every single person he meets for the rest of his life will know that he spent eight months as a Hymaiese general’s pet. No one will ever say it, but they’ll know. And it’ll be as much of a trap –
Soft leather cuffs around his wrists, red cotton sheets, trying not to breathe too hard as Xeng Kho moves over him, careful, clever fingers and gentle kisses and lies that he wants desperately to but refuses to let himself believe –As the bastard’s tent was. And he doesn’t think he can stand that. Maybe, in time, they’ll believe that he’s dead. He doesn’t have to go back and confirm their unspoken suspicion. He doesn’t have to add to his family’s already considerable shame. Better for his mother to think he died brave than to know what was done to him.
What he let be done to him. He should have died rather than let himself be enslaved. He didn’t. He doesn’t remember how he could have, but there is always a way. It doesn’t take anything but willpower to bite through your own tongue.
The rain’s letting up, but the ground beneath him is still soaking wet. He lets himself notice how completely wet and muddy he is, because being annoyed at that is better than being on the road his thoughts are taking him down. He sits up and starts pulling pine needles out of his hair. His hair is too damn long. Usually prisoners of war get it cut short, but –
Sitting, back straight and ears back, trying to set the wall on fire with the force of his stare rather than think about how Xeng Kho is running delicately clawed fingers through his hair, parting it to press a kiss to the nape of his neck, fanning it across his back, pulling on it just a little to let him know that he should lean back further –The fluffy white bastard had liked it. He’d cut all Ryoka’s soldiers’ hair, but left Ryoka’s alone. And they had looked at him like he was a traitor.
Maybe he is. He hadn’t given away anything, but then, Xeng Kho had stopped asking fairly quickly. After he’d let Ryoka’s soldiers free, that was. And he’d only done that because –
Beaten, his arm throbbing where it’s cracked, at least two snapped ribs making their presence known every time he breathes too deeply, sitting on the ground with his wrists chained to a bolt above him, spitting defiance at Xeng Kho as the white cat gets too close. The general outlining a simple condition for freedom. Not his own, though –Ryoka had said “do whatever you want to me but let my men go.” So Xeng Kho had.
A day after they’d been sent off, the bastard had packed up the camp and they’d moved, and two days later when they’d set up camp again he’d had Ryoka brought to his tent, and Ryoka is not going to think about –
Waiting for the first cut, for the torture to start, his legs kicked out from under him, completely helpless with his ankles chained together and his arm in a sling. Waiting, watching Xeng Kho as he moved closer, glaring and not showing his fear except by jumping when white fingers touch his markings. Turning away. Xeng Kho forcing his head back around, making him look up so that he’s at the right angle to –He is
not thinking about it. He’s ripping a knot of sap and mud out of his hair and it is not in any way similar to anything that has happened to him before. He is licking his tail clean and getting the mud out of his ears and it reminds him of being a kitten more than anything else.
The rain’s stopped, and he’s lost the trail completely, and it’s starting to get light. He finds the sunrise, looks at it.
Instead of following it, he finds the dryest patch of needles he can and curls up on it, willing himself to go to sleep quickly.
Today is the end of the second fortnight. Ryoka slices another mark in the bark of the tree he’s coming to think of as his. He sleeps in it every day, brings his prey to it and has a fire pit at its base.
From halfway up it, he can see the mud brick walls of an Ab-Syllan city. Every morning, just before he sleeps, he climbs it and looks at the city. Every evening when he wakes up, he thinks that today he’ll start walking again, find someplace else where no one knows him.
Except he never does. He can’t go to the city, but he can’t leave it, either. It’s the closest thing to home he has.
He has to hunt today, so he makes sure the fire pit’s covered with needles and finds the area of underbrush on the edges of the forest. There are deer here, and he should be able to catch one if he stays quiet enough. They come out at dusk, most of the time. He settles in brush downwind of the clearing.
Then the fur on the back of his neck stands up. He can’t hear anything but his soldier’s sense tells him there’s someone behind him.
“There’s a settlement of Ab-Syllans two and a half miles west of here,” he hears, before he can think of what to do. He spins quickly and bares his teeth, his tail fluffing.
“You,” he spits. Xeng Kho. Ryoka is shocked, scared, and pissed off, but somewhere there’s a familiarity, too. He pushes that away, because he’s getting experienced in lying to himself.
“Yes. Why aren’t you home by now? I would have thought you’d get there as soon as possible.” The bastard sounds like he’s making idle conversation, not like he’s just stalked an escaped prisoner for a month.
“Fuck you. You know why.” By his smirk, he’s just waiting to hear Ryoka say it. He won’t. He won’t let the bastard have the satisfaction of hearing Ryoka damn himself.
“They think you’re dead, Ryoka. Wouldn’t your family be pleased to have you back?” he asks.
Ryoka growls. “For all you know I don’t have family.”
“Of course you have family. Two younger brothers, your parents, your older sister and her husband, and your mother’s brothers.” Ryoka hisses, and Xeng Kho purrs, smirking. “Thank you for the confirmation. Don’t worry; I won’t touch them. We’re winning. We don’t need a populace that wants us dead once Lord Nishao is in charge. But wait, your brothers are military, aren’t they? Tell me, are they as pretty as you?”
Ryoka nearly launches himself at the Hymaiese, then, only the memory of the last time he tried that stopping him. Instead, he glares. “Don’t even fucking
think it. I’ll kill you.”
“Feel free to try. But then, you don’t really want to, do you?” His smile is too much and Ryoka attacks, some last bit of self-preservation keeping him from launching himself head-on. Instead he fakes a slice to the face and follows up with a stab to the gut.
Ryoka has gotten stronger and faster, living out here, but Xeng Kho still blocks both his hands and twists him around, pulling his arm up almost hard enough to break it.
“You see? If you really wanted to you’d have done it by now. Something’s holding you back. I wonder what it is,” the Hymaiese says, near enough to Ryoka’s ear that it makes him twitch. Ryoka is trying not to scream, gritting his teeth and falling back into the habits of self-preservation that he’d developed while wearing the bastard’s bracelet.
Wait. He doesn’t have to do that anymore. He’s free. He kicks backwards, his claws cutting through silk and into flesh, and while the bastard’s distracted he twists and brings his claws to bear, aiming for the eyes. He almost gets it, and he feels his claws scrape bone as Xeng Kho leans backwards to keep his vision.
The kick sends him sprawling, and all he can think of for a few seconds is getting his breath back; then the bastard is above him again, pinning Ryoka’s hands above his head, and he has the nerve to look concerned about Ryoka’s well-being.
“Here. You should take better care of yourself.” He produces a pair of canvas trousers and a carved wood comb from somewhere in his robe, and drops them next to Ryoka.
Ryoka tries to get loose, do something appropriate like throw the stuff back at him, but Xeng Kho moves too quickly and manages to press a kiss to his cheek before standing up, leaving Ryoka pushing at nothing.
“Remember there’s always a place for you at my camp,” he says, and melts into the forest.
Ryoka sits up, not willing to give chase, and drops his head. His claws are covered in blood; he licks it off, absently, while looking at what he’s been left.
He could use the stuff, but he leaves it there for now, because he wants to make sure Xeng Kho’s gone before he picks it up.
He goes back to hunting, putting it out of his mind. He’s so focused, in fact, that he brings down the first deer he sets his sights on. When he drags it back to camp, after he’s cleaned the blood off himself again, he walks over and stares at the comb like he’s trying to prove dominance.
He should know better than to get in a staring match with something that’s not alive. He gives up and picks the things up, and as he does something heavy and gold falls out of the folds of canvas.
A bracelet. And not the kind you give pets, either. The kind you give lovers.
He doesn’t want to touch it, but he picks it up and throws it as hard as he can, shouting out his rage. He doesn’t look to see where it landed.
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